The Hold Steady live webcast tonight

A bit last-minute, but if you're going to be around your computer tonight around 8:30 EST, why not stream The Hold Steady's performance in Washington, D.C.? Seriously, give me one good reason why not. Art Brut opens the show.

And if that's not enough Hold Steady on Art Brut action for you, check out this Pitchfork transcript of Craig Finn and Eddie Argos talking about...stuff.

"I've surrounded myself with doctors and deep thinkers"

Not that I can find really good proof of this online (not that I looked very hard) but the impression that I get is that Boston College's "Master Class" lecture series is basically a pretty cool way to get guys like me to think "Hey, I guess a few cool people claim BC as their alma mater," for a split second until I click on to something more thought provoking.

Craig Finn is pretty cool though, and he will be heading to BC on September 25th (2 days after Springsteen's birthday, btw) to discuss how his time at Boston College enabled him to be able to write so eloquently about ill-advised sexual encounters and wanton drug abuse.

[actual details.]

The Hold Steady want your pretty face

From a MySpace bulletin just sent by The Hold Steady:

We're asking you to scan and send in BLACK AND WHITE PHOTOBOOTH photos of you and your friends to PHOTOBOOTH@VAGRANT.COM

We will use the photobooth pictures for the artwork on the forthcoming new single from The Hold Steady as well as in the marketing for the release.

PLEASE SCAN THE PHOTOS IN 300dpi HIGH-RESOLUTION FORMAT!

We also need you to print this release form (it's a PDF) for EACH PERSON IN THE PHOTOS and SIGN THE RELEASE and scan in a lower-resolutiuon JPG.
http://www.vagrant.com/theholdsteady/thsrelease.pdf

- - -

The photobooth photos NEED to be Black and White.

Put the HIGH-RES PHOTO and SIGNED RELEASE FORM in a .zip file and email (you can use yousendit.com if you please) to: photobooth@vagrant.com

Here's a ridiculous list of photobooth locations.

I'll add that if you're in NYC, the last time I checked there's a B&W one at Niagara.

[myspace.com/theholdsteady]

The Hold Steady - Take Me Out to the Ballgame

I'm not sure exactly what it is about this video that makes me cringe. Maybe it's the jersey and hat combination, which seems a little too MTV-staged for my tastes. Or the look on Craig Finn's face at the end of it that says "there isn't enough Budweiser in the sea to wash the blood from my hands." But I'll admit that if I was at a Twins' game and I heard The Hold Steady coming out of the PA, I would get pretty pumped. So...I dunno.

Stereogum has the whole sexybackstory.

The Hold Steady, Northsix, 1/18/07

Seriously, why do I even bother with the camera?

If 2006 was a good year for The Hold Steady (and it was), 2007 is shaping up to be even better. A week after Craig Finn and company made their late-night TV debut on Letterman (youtube), and only a few days before embarking on a sold-out UK tour, The Hold Steady descended on Northsix for the most concert-like party I've ever been to.

It didn't hurt that The Hold Steady's first show ever had been on the very same stage 3 years prior. And Northsix's imminent demise (kinda) was certainly lost on no one in the (very full) house either, with numerous thanks from the band throughout the set to a venue that was "always good for a show," even if a band might not be able to draw a full house.

But it was more than all this that made last Thursday night one to remember. It was the palpable energy of a band at its finest, a deserving band finally getting its due. It was a bar band about to go big-time, playing a hometown show to warm up for the impending firestorm of hype that surely awaits across the Atlantic.

They seemed to play everything the crowd wanted to hear. Old stuff from Almost Killed Me (amazon) like opener "Positive Jam" and "Knuckles," and obviously all the new stuff (with the disappointing-but-I'll-get-over-it exception of "Chillout Tent"). And at the end of the second encore they pulled half the crowd onstage (even though the FAQ over at northsix.com strictly forbids such disregard for personal safety) for "Killer Parties."

There a lot of different reasons that I like going to concerts. Sometimes I go to try to discover great new bands (NYC-based Looker opened, now that I'm thinking of it), for example. The Hold Steady at Northsix was a band living up to the hype in a big, sweaty, happy-drunken way. I'll be talking about it for weeks.

BTW, here's a neat remix of "Killer Parties" that they've got posted over at theholdsteady.com:
The Hold Steady - Killer Parties (remix) (mp3, right click to download.)